


At the Broken Places

by jenni3penny



Category: NCIS
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 14:08:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18661936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenni3penny/pseuds/jenni3penny
Summary: "She ignores the voice in the back of her head, the one that's asking her if maybe Gibbs was right to keep her away from all this…" Established Jack/Gibbs. Mention of torture/rape/molestation within the case, just a warning.





	At the Broken Places

**Author's Note:**

> "The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places." - Hemingway

She knows that _usually_ … usually she would have caught the fact that he was hiding something from her.

That is, she would have caught it before it had landed as a case briefing memo, cross-wise on her desk and with a note from a co-worker asking for a call back. Or before Eleanor had begun dropping heavy hints into their casual conversation… Usually…

Their _usual_ has been replaced with a temporarily new norm it seems, though. Because now that they've slept together (two separate nights, both of them unexpected) the agent running the case seems to think that he can hide things from her better than before.

Unfortunately… it also seems he's _right_.

***

As soon as Vance had ordered him to turn things over to Maureen's unit he'd started on damage control, already trying to limit the white noise and chatter surrounding this particular case. Still, any murder that involved sexual abuse and torture was going to be bigger than their bit of bullpen, bigger than their silence, and bigger than his ability to control. It was also likely to hit the news outlets at breakneck speeds, no doubt.

But he _had_ tried. He'd put a proverbial choke hold on his own team, just to keep the case from being sensationalized within their own walls. Just to give Privacy and Humanity higher ratings than Drama in their own house.

Petty Officer Addison deserved far better than whispers, sympathetic looks, and gossip. She deserved the work the Sexual Violence unit would put into looking after her friends and family. They deserved the time and emotional care that he and his team just weren't equipped to provide.

But he also knew that as soon as he released the file to Cabot it was readily available for the entire upper staff and, Jesus, he’d done everything he could to keep Sloane twenty miles outta Dodge on this one… To the point of asking her to work on some of his older cold cases, under the pretense of fresh eyes and new perspective.

It didn't work, though.

Because him releasing any case to anyone else was generally unheard of, that he knew. It was so surprisingly odd that it caused a stir and if there was anything Jack _couldn't_ ignore it was office gossip about him, her, or even him _and_ her.

Especially lately.

Especially since he's started to not be able to look at her without longing or loving written all over his damn face.

 

****

 

He watches them banter back and forth from a distance, slowing his steps and enjoying the scene the two women make. They're both beautiful, consummate professionals and excellent at what they do. And they're both obviously familiar with each other, friendly and teasing and he's slightly mesmerized by their combined laughter. He's smitten by them being friends, by their near matching smiles.

At least until Jack catches his approach, her dark eyes drifting toward him and going thin and he's not quite sure why he's so deep in the shit but she's making it fairly obvious that he's gonna need some sort of leverage to haul himself up out of it.

Well, she knows about the case now, he figures, especially if she's working with Maureen. And, likely, she knows he's been keeping her out of it.

Maybe dinner would help him…

Second thought, maybe dinner at a place that has a wine list and is already used to seeing him get his ass chewed by a beautiful woman.

“Looks like you two know each other already.” He motions between both of them, knowing that he's not getting to the supposed safety of his own desk without going through them. So, really, he had better just face it head on. Thankfully McGee is the only one at his desk and he's doing his best to look uninterested.

“Jack and I have worked with each other from a distance. It's good to finally have her close by.”

“Maureen's here for the particulars on the Addison case.” Sloane says, half her attention on the way he swings her a sharp glance and then blinks the telling look away.

Cabot obviously hasn't entirely caught up on whatever is happening between them (but then, really, neither has he… he doesn't know _what_ they are to each other yet). It seems she's starting to suspect, though. He can tell by the blatantly bemused look, one brow lifted and her head cocked before she turns back to Sloane. “Yeah, I'd like both of you to give me an idea of what I'm walking into, if you can.”

Jack gives the other woman a sweet smile and a squeeze along the wrist before she hugs the folder into her chest and nods. “This is my first time seeing the notes, Mo. Give me an hour or so?”

“Sure, I'll badger Gibbs first,” she says through a grin, a big victorious smile that says she's likely connected more than half the dots and she's enjoying every moment.

Maureen has always read him too quickly and too easily. Putting her beside Jack, making them a pair - it's a goddamn travesty, for him anyhow.

“I'm sure he'll enjoy that,” Sloane murmurs, her voice dry as she gives him barely a look before heading for the stairs.

“So…” Cabot’s knowing smirk is riding her tone. “You screwed up _already_?”

“Apparently… yes.”

 

****

It's the photos that make her hands shake, the photos from the scene. She's usually such a little crime scene photo junkie, always looking for the tiniest of details. She's always searching for something that nobody else has seen, the undiscovered secret.

These hit a little too close to home, though - and especially in that regard. They ping an ache somewhere right mid-chest and it radiates outward, makes her lungs feel pressed and squeezed as she tries to breathe normally.

Jack inhales slowly through her nose as she studies the way the Petty Officer's hands had been bound, roped to each other and then to a thin pipe, right near a valve. Her weight had been pulling down against her wrists, twisting them together and putting such a familiar pressure on them that Jack can feel her own hands and arms ache in sympathy. Her back spikes remembered pain all down her spine and it seats itself low, embedded just above her hips. Her shoulder blades remind her how empty and dislocated they'd become and she has to shift in her chair and slowly exhale.

She ignores the voice in the back of her head, the one that's asking her if maybe Gibbs was right to keep her away from all this… Maybe his gut was right, once again.

Because each human wrist is made up of 8 small bones and one of her doctors, one of the many, had then told her how lucky she was to have only broken a few. Both scaphoids, just below her thumbs. She doesn't remember the name of the other, somewhere in her right wrist, in a place that deeply aches when it rains.

Lucky...

She _was_ lucky.

Because she'd still walked away while Addison hadn't.

Which is exactly why she needs to be involved.

****

“I know you're pissed.”

She snorts and refuses to give him the entirety of her attention. She's still reading some of McGee's notes it looks like, a couple pages of notations, he knows. He knows that every member of his team has made sure their paperwork is above reproach on this case. He made sure of it. “Observant.”

“It's not the sorta case I flash around, Jack. And you _know_ why,” he snaps back, using the side of his shoe to shove her door shut.

As soon as she hears it click closed she looks up, her face accusatory as she stares him down and slants back in her desk chair. “I don't like being shut out. Who here could have given you better insight on this, Gibbs?”

The problem is, she's got a fair point. Few of their agents have dealt with serious methods of torture. Besides her, he and McGee account for a small portion of the list but… she's right. With Ziva gone, she's one of the only female agents he knows who’s been through significant torture. And possibly some sort of molestation, rape? She's never said anything to imply it but, Christ knows, she was the first person he thought of when he found Hannah Addison hanging naked from a water pipe, wrists bound around it and mouth stuffed full of -

“Stop,” he demands, his eyes going shut before he realizes that he's speaking more to his own brain than her... “I came in here to invite you to dinner.”

Jack blinks surprise at both his force and then the obvious emotional recoil, lashes fluttering as she studies him. “Really?”

Kudos to him for throwing her off her annoyance. She's already been sidelined and his eyes brighten slightly in answer as he reaches for a lollipop. Jack just watches him hook a red one from half down the dish and pocket it for later.

“Lucatelli's?” he asks, knowing it's already one of her favorites.

“Maybe,” she minces back tightly. He figures that she’s going lenient on him more because of delicious food and equally delicious wine rather than anything else. Certainly _not_ the idea of letting him burn off his frustration by way of sex on his dining room table...

“I already made reservations.”

“ _Maybe_ ,” she allows again, watching him head for the door. “Insufferable bastard.”

Well, she's not _wrong_.

“You'd better go home and change. I'll pick you up there.”

 

****

The problem is that he's a good man.

He's a good and kind and fiercely loving man and she's been trained to see it all from his point of view and that makes it really hard to stay mad at him. He's also sexy as hell sometimes…

Gibbs is generally wonderful to her and she's been walking disaster, especially lately. What problem hasn't he had to try and solve when it comes to her, huh? He's been there for her beyond just the bounds of friendship and he knows more than most anyone else. Leon is the only person she's trusted with more and he's closing that emotional gap far faster than she could have ever imagined.

That puts her on edge a little, putting that much trust in a broken-hearted man. Also a man who is plenty set in his ways. He's never going to be any different than he is and she has to question whether or not what he is… whether he’s what she needs.

 _Bullshit, Jack… Fess up_.

He _is_ what she needs - loyalty, stability, kindness. He continually makes her laugh.

He's also stubborn, occasionally indifferent, socially inept. Tactless at times, stupidly over-protective, and ill-tempered some days.

But, God, he _is_ patient with her. He has been since she first tried to trick him, since she blew through his doorway and named the day they met with storm. He wanted peace and quiet, so of course she came in with a hurricane and wrecked him sideways.

Part of her had really wished they were strangers that night… a small sliver of her had already wanted to be what he'd come home to after the last of that storm.

They can't change what they are, though. Not any more than they can change the fact that Petty Officer Addison's abuse, her torture and murder, it's going to taint whatever is happening between them. Because he's seeing her in every photo, seeing her pain on display, like a morbid and slightly skewed diorama of her past life. The first time he stepped into that dark basement he saw _her_ back mangled, her naked body hanging and her head bloodied. Bound and beaten women… they change a man like him, like Leon. Jackie Vance had told her that much ages ago.

And she's terrified to know that Gibbs hasn't just seen it all, all her ugliness… he knows where it’s come from. He's touched it all too, hands and mouth, kisses and soft touches and how did he ever, _ever_ , manage to see all of her so quickly?

How is it that he has all her secrets and still seemingly wants more, more of her and the truth and time together.

Then again… he doesn't have them _all_ , does he? He only knows the Cliff Notes, really. Reader's Digest version. More than most anyone but Leon, her doctors, her therapists. Still. That's not really half of it.

And half of it may very well change the way he looks at her, especially if looking at Addison's murder has him so on edge.

 

****

She'd been quiet through dinner but more in a gently contemplative way than anything. She'd lost most of the earlier edge, her hands softer and her eyes rounder, deeper, more beautiful. He had managed to make her laugh at least a few times, he’d gotten her to lean closer in her pretty little black dress and tease him.

They'd managed to have a nice and warm evening, he had drawn a smile and blush out of her over and over again. He'd managed to pull her back into sweet heated flirtation, to kiss her as he'd helped her into the truck.

“I just…” But it's in the darkened car later that it comes back between them, when neither of them have to meet each other's eyes, “Do you know what the parilla is?”

 _Jesus_... Yes, he knows.

He's _been_ there, on the metal torture table. They call it ‘the grill’ for a reason, one they seemingly have in common.

He knows she's using a phrase older than her capture but it's an effective one with him. He’s been stopped up and trapped in South America enough to be fairly familiar with the tactic. And because the parilla is such an effective form of torture, one he's fought against himself, it clenches his heart up painfully just to think about her being strapped to a metal table and made the circuitous connection to a car battery. _Hell_ , he doesn't even want to know where the sick bastards put the electrodes on her body. He's made it a challenge to kiss every inch of her and he just… he doesn't want to know.

He feels he _needs_ to know. But God knows he doesn't _want_ to know… “Car battery?”

“That wasn't enough voltage to suit him,” she negates, voice surprisingly even. “Not after the first time. He needed a stronger response. Went bigger.”

His stomach rolls over at her answer, has him swallowing hard without a ready reply. He'd been wet down once before being shocked and sometimes he can imagine that he can still taste that burnt metal mineral taste at the back of his tongue.

“Everything in your body just implodes, everything fails. It's unbearable, Gibbs.”

He knows, he's absolutely aware… He's felt the same cascade of pain, the same volley of agony throughout compulsively twitching muscles. Utter bodily degradation.

“I know,” he murmurs, taking a slow right turn that leads them closer to his home. “But you _did_ bear it, Sloane. We both did.”

She turns her head at the revelation, enough to study his profile in the passing streetlights and he just barely sees the movement off the edge of his peripheral. Her hand lifts, fingers catching against his hair and stroking backward. He takes another turn nearer to home, tipping his head closer as she traces his earlobe.

“Jack - ”

“You're wondering if they raped me first.” Her tone of voice is so unnaturally distant as her hand falls, words sounding oddly detached and dry. He can hear how far she's disassociated from what she's saying and he honestly can't tell what that means. “It's pretty standard right? With women?”

… _fuck_. He coughs an exhalation out, entirely made of surprise. They're not getting away from the entirely of this conversation, obviously. She seems to need to have it and he's not going to deny her the space to talk about these things.

He would never have asked her that, though, and he can't seem to take oxygen down into his lungs as she turns it around on him. He also can't tell what she's implying, if anything at all.

Frankly, he doesn't need to know unless she wants him to… “ _Jack_ …”

She's utterly indecipherable.

She is… insoluble.

She's the lesson that he has never been able to entirely learn… and that's momentarily okay.

Because dinner is already souring in his stomach and he's already too riled with seething rage to be of any emotional use to her in this conversation. His skin is so hot to touch right now but she does anyhow, she searches for his hand with her own and he lifts it to his mouth, presses the backs of her knuckles against his lips as he exhales.

“He didn't. They touched me sometimes, and he threatened to let the others but...” she shakes her head as she exhales. “He never did.”

He could murder Hakim, bloody and messy, rape or not… He could kill the sick son of a bitch with his bare hands. He _knows_ better and part of him is still considering taking a little trip to visit violence on her Masahun.

Jack is unwavering in his passenger seat as she silently watches him drive, she's unbreakable beside him. She's so small framed and lithe for being so strident and fierce. He could worship this woman awhile, just for awhile… Just as long as she let him.

It isn't until he takes her hand into his lap and holds it there that she speaks again. “I broke three bones in my wrists without even realizing it. The way they had me tied to the table? And when I struggled - ”

“I get it,” he forces through clenched teeth and a tightened jaw, his thumb sliding to ride her wrist bone in answer.

It's not just about the case anymore, not for them. This is about far more than just him shielding her from emotional fallout or her feeling left out. This is because they're getting closer and the both of them are seeing more than sex in each other and it's bleeding out now, tinting and tainting their friendship.

It's about her making sure he knows the truth before any grand decisions are made. This is her, making sure he's not a man to run from the ugliest secrets she's got.

“Do you?” she asks blankly. “Do you get it?”

“Jack… I couldn't have you in the middle of this.”

“And I couldn't pack my things to move here with anything but newspaper,” she says quickly, voice going sharp. “Tell me why.”

“Listen - ”

“I _know_ you know, Jethro.” It's really the first time in the entire conversation that she's started to lose the strict control she's had on her tone of voice. “ _Tell_ me.”

He can't look at her as he says it because he knows that in his imagination he'll see it. “He used bubble wrap to choke you.”

He sees it anyhow, the way she would have gasped in the plastic as she'd tried to breathe. Fodder for his nightmares, he knows.

“He thought it was _funny_.” The last word is said with such disdain and morbidity that he swallows back against bile as he turns onto his street.

He doesn't know how she can still be speaking about these things and still be so calm as she looks forward again. Her hand is still curled up in his and he has to temper how tightly he's gripping against it as they get to his driveway.

He doesn't know _how_ she didn't murder the bastard when she had the chance…

He doesn't know how else, _besides all this_ , that she got to be so strong.

“You're not gonna scare me away, Jack,” he tells her, releasing her fingers so that he can put the truck in ‘park’.

As he shuts off the engine he swears he can hear her mumble a very quiet, “We'll see.”

****

“Do you think I'm weak?”

It would be easier to answer such a serious question if she didn't insist on asking it while sliding the straps of her dress off, one shoulder bared at a time.

Damn it, he doesn't care to pretend that he's not interested in putting his mouth to her skin. So he steps in behind her and draws her hands away from the zipper of her dress. He lowers it slowly, kissing her left shoulder while she sighs.

“Not in the least,” he says against her skin. “Jack… I wanted to save you the - ”

“Don't use those words, please,” she interrupts and, while it could be said angrily, it's a soft request. Her voice is so gentle that he doesn't worry as he turns his head and kisses the taste of apology against her lips.

He hadn't considered his words carefully enough…

She lets him kiss her but then she ducks her face down, snuggling closer so that he's got to lift his jaw to make room. “I don't like to see you hurt.”

“I don't like to be treated like there's something wrong with me,” she murmurs into his neck and shoulder. “I do _not_ need to be fixed or saved or shielded.”

“Jack - ”

A noise of disagreement clears her throat as she looks up again, her left hand rising to catch at his jaw. “Is that understood?”

“Loud and clear, Lieutenant,” he assures her, letting his voice drop into heat. “Are we done fighting?”

“You like a good fight.”

“I like you, Sloane.” He allows himself to sink into the scent of her, of her skin and hair and the spiced heat of her proximity. “You know that.”

He's not really ever hidden the fact, either…

****

“Ellie told me, y'know?” she tells him, grinning at her personal victory as she makes him stretch back by straddling his lap.

His hands meet her movement as he relaxes into the headboard, catching the backs of her thighs and jerking her closer as she stretches into him and his bedsheet. She smells like something sweet and smooth and he could definitely get used to seeing her in just an undone dress shirt and black lace underwear.

She is, sometimes, the quirkiest little thing he's ever gotten into his bed, though. And that includes the way she's eating half melted strawberry ice cream from one of his coffee mugs.

She's also _not_ sharing...

“Couldn't find a bowl?” he asks, trying to pry the spoon away from her. She pretends to fight him at first but gives up both spoon and cup as he kisses her chastely, surprising her.

She pouts out a whimper and leans up into his chest, wide brown eyes watching him take a spoonful of her prize into his mouth. “This way I don't eat the whole carton... _Gibbs_.”

He chuckles into the long and drawn way she whines his name, frustration tainting her voice. He swallows the ice cream he's stolen and spoons some for her, letting her have it while he watches her mouth and then the way her eyes slip closed as she sighs. A little dramatic but all Jack, her whole body flopping forward in pleasure. She curls up into his chest, arms drawn between them and head tucked down. He lets the spoon into the cup of rapidly melting sweetness and he turns it aside to the bedside table.

Both his hands rub up her back and he purposely strokes over the fabric that covers her scars at the same speed, aiming for nothing but comfort, acting as though they don't exist. “Ellie told you about the case?”

“About you keeping it from me,” she half mumbles, stretching her back with a groan, one that has him digging the pads of his fingers into her lower back. She moans a delightfully erotic noise, lifting her arms against his shoulders so that she can stretch her spine and give him more space to cover.

“That young lady…”

“Is learning,” she whispers, turning her head so that her lips brush his but pull away as he tries to meet her with kissing.

“She's learning from more than me, though.” It's only a mild accusation and mostly made in humor but she catches it and laughs.

“Not sure you like that, huh?”

He makes an intentional scowl, darkens the tone of his voice as a bare shoulder shrugs forward. “Keepin’ secrets.”

“Daughters do,” Jack tells him sweetly, an apologetic softness on her face as she uses the flat of her palm to stroke back from his forehead. Her mouth drops and takes his up so self-assuredly. The confidence in her kiss has him sitting up into her touches, crushing her closer into his chest while he groans his tongue against hers.

He doesn't want to end the kiss nearly as soon as she does, mainly because she's got him wind-swept, a little storm-swayed and all since the damn day they'd met. And any woman that can so surely kiss him and draw his dress shirt off her shoulders at once? He could just keep on kissing her til morning. Even if she does stop him short and gulp down a breath before gently admonishing him. “Stop talking about Eleanor.”

He grins at the implication, the very idea that she doesn't wanna discuss any of their actual or proverbial daughters while he's helping get her mostly naked in his lap. It feels just intimately domestic enough to churn heat into his gut, just familial enough to tug at something deep and low in him. It's a feeling so protective and purely reactionary, all reflexive and primal.

He bites his tongue against reminding her that Ellie and Faith are not all that far off in age, really… Four or five years difference? Kelly would have been their age. Ziva and Abby, both a little older…

He's not the sort of man who can divorce himself from being protective of his family and, like it or not, she's found herself smack in the middle of that family. It was an inevitability, really, as soon as she'd started slipping her secrets into his pockets for safe-keeping.

“I will never not wanna protect you, Jack,” he murmurs, fingers tracing a line down the center of her sternum, teasing between her breasts and down as he meets her eyes. It's taken the seriousness of his confession and the gravel in his voice to make her open her eyes and watch him. “That's just a fact.”

She's interestedly watching his face as his hand falls, palm going flat against her stomach and stalling. She'll stop him and his touching if she wants to, he has no doubt. A small sigh slips off her instead, lifting her shoulders into a shrug of acceptance. “I know. I knew that when I told you everything.”

Which time? Which everything?

“Then why get mad?” Gibbs asks, only half joking, only half serious.

He shifts his palms to brace her sides and lower back, forcing her to arch her spine as he pulls forward against her waist. She moans softly as her head drops back, the sound of it low in her throat and sweet. All of her is a tease, every warm inch of bare skin, her throat, her breasts, the way half her hair is catching against her shoulders as she stretches.

He lifts his eyes and watches her smile to herself, can't help smirking in answer. Her eyes are shut and she's so obviously happy, appeased and comfortable. He's pretty pleased with himself, honestly. The novelty of getting her blissed out calm and sexually sated? It's not at all lost on him yet. “Jack?”

She's beautiful in her daze. Too goddamn beautiful and equally impossible to ignore. He can't help laying his mouth against her throat, kissing and licking against flushed heat while she hums agreement. She tastes like him and sweat and sex. There’s a low and latent tang of perfume still on her throat and he’s become familiar with it now. Her hand catches against the back of his head and her nails starting tracing against his scalp in a way that could damn near put him on his knees if he'd been standing.

The way her body relaxes once more into his hands is smooth and her voice goes both honeyed and humored at once. “Because you got dumb.”

“That's fair,” he chuckles in reply, enjoying the way she tangles her fingers into his hair and tugs his head back up to meet hers. She's so seemingly sure of herself and he knows that she generally thinks about twice as much as he does… so her supposed confidence is that much more attractive to him. She's stronger than he is some days, he thinks.

Though… she can be pretty damn compulsive at times. Like kissing him in the elevator while her hand twists him closer by the fabric of his shirt.

“Thank you,” she whispers into his lips as the precursor to a kiss. He's not sure by the sound of it if she’s answering him or being much more obtuse but, Christ, it really doesn't matter. Not as she shrugs lower in his lap, kissing him while making sure to put pressure right against the half erection he's got started.

She's so much more dangerous to him than he had planned. He honestly doesn't know how she's managed to wedge herself this deeply into the cracked and chipped up parts of him.

She's maybe, currently, one of the few things holding those parts together. Which is especially dangerous, considering she's pretty cracked up herself.

“I just kept seeing… something that wasn't there,” he admits, nearly losing the last half of the sentence as he exhales.

He kept seeing the ghost of her past that could have lived if Leon had never come along. Because he knows the angles of her scars and how many cross over each other, the starred and lashed ‘X’ they make against soft skin. He knows now what they would have looked like bloodied and flayed open while her back was stretched long by gravity.

He can still smell the old blood and sweat and feel the weight of another (dead) woman in his arms as he had helped Palmer carefully lower Addison from the way she had been hung up. He had sent Bishop and McGee both out to canvas the neighbors, photograph the house. He had made sure that Jimmy and Nick were the only other two in the room as they'd finally laid Hannah Rae Addison down and let her body rest. Jimmy could handle it, would accept it after awhile - and especially with Nick there beside him. They made a stalwart pair, those two. Their combined gentleness and tag team silence as they had both covered the victim had proved him right.

The petty officer had been… _pretty_. Pictures showed the sort of round faced and young pretty that often made him think of Shannon when they had first met. It had always reminded him of how he had been tugged back and struck still by the kind innocence of her face.

Addison's face hadn't been pretty in death, though. It had been beaten, bloodied and horrified.

“I know,” Jack murmurs acknowledgment, her voice thready as she brushes his cheek and draws his attention back. Jacqueline, who he's never seen as just _pretty_ , per se. She's always been something more sensual, more substantive. She's always been something both physical and familiar, even if ‘ _always_ ’ has only been measured by a couple of years. “It's different, Gibbs.”

“Is it?” Logically, yes, it's different. He knows that much. He understands that the events are nothing alike and all the same to his emotions at once.

“Yeah,” she assures him, nodding as she wraps her arms against his shoulders and cuddles tighter into him. “Because I'm still here.”

 

****

“Are the rumors true?”

 _Oh, hell_ … She's sure they probably are, even though she hasn't heard them. Whatever the Rumor Mill's been gristing - they're probably spot on. She works in a building full of trained federal investigators and she hasn't been anywhere near discreet when it comes to her feelings for one Leroy Jethro Gibbs. Especially the morning one of the guys from HR had caught her sticking her tongue down his throat as the elevator had popped open.

Subtle? _Not in the freakin’ least_ … “Which ones?”

Maureen just gives her a bland look, one that says she's not buying any of her supposed innocence. Good Lord, anyone who has high enough clearance to access even half her employment record knows she's far from innocent. She and Maureen have been back and forth, across the country, over cases for years together.

And Gibbs is, actually… Well, sorta her type.

“Jack, c'mon… You and Gibbs?”

She just snorts feigned annoyance, even as Maureen stares her down. “I coulda beaten his ass with a stapler yesterday.”

“And?”

She debates telling a lie for about a tenth of a second but she knows Maureen will catch it. The woman's got an uncanny ability to call her out on her bullshit. Instead Jack looks down at the coffee cup in her hand and sighs over the lipstick ring at the lid mouth.

 _Here goes, Jacqueline_ …

“I slept with him last night instead. Again. Twice. _I can't stop,”_ she mock whines as her friend laughs between them, the sound of it happy and pleased. The response has her smirking and giddy and, _God_ , why shouldn't she be happy?? Jack makes a helpless face and drops her shoulders low. She stomps one foot in feigned annoyance as the other agent just shakes her head and rolls her eyes. “He just looks at me with those damn beautiful eyes, Mo.”

An exaggerated and playful ‘oomph’ noise comes up out of the bottom of her throat before she takes a swallow of rapidly cooling coffee. The one he had bought her on the way in, sweetened just enough, grudgingly somewhere between what she would usually use and what he deems mostly acceptable.

“Well, that's the true sign of a woman in lust,” Cabot says gently. She has a smile that's near wistful, warm and amused.

“Don't look at me like that, Maureen,” she whispers and rolls her glance away, turning toward her desk.

“I'm not judging. Gibbs is a good man.”

“He's an emotional trainwreck,” she admits as she clears the corner of the desk and drops into her own desk chair. Jack sighs after sitting, forcing the exhalation out through her nose while Mo heads for the couch and sits more gently, a little more grace than energy.

There's a healthy pause between them before the other woman clears her throat, “You've got a few baggage cars of your own, sweetheart.”

“God, I know,” she laughs into the room in answer, head back and eyes shut. Her right foot presses to the floor, turning her chair toward the windows even as she refuses to lift her head. The sun is streaming in warm through the half shaded blinds and having Maureen in her office is somehow comforting. “He knows too. More than most anyone.”

“More than me?”

Jack opens her eyes but still doesn't look down, head relaxed back as she shrugs and wonders who in the room actually has a doctorate in psychology. Cabot is giving her a good run for her money… “Yes, actually.”

“As it should be, then,” Mo offers gently, no argument and all acceptance. “This case has you both twitchy.”

Jack just breathes out a sardonic laugh, nodding her head slowly as she finally looks down. “Very much.”

“It's mostly over now. Gibbs only handed it over to me because I can better address the fallout,” the other woman says, a huff coming off her in humor before she continues, her voice going conspiratorial. “And because Vance told him to.”

Right, because as stubborn and protective as Gibbs can be… Leon had been there, done it all first. Of course he would have shielded her, would have willingly turned her head away from seeing Addison. Hell, Leon had tried to keep her out of Afghanistan the year before and Gibbs had been the one to get her there. Gibbs, who had obviously taken the fall for the both of them, not a word otherwise…

She had been lucky for longer than just getting away from Hakim (both times). Her luck had so many faces anymore - and they all looked like family.

“Are you going to the memorial?” Sloane asks as she fishes for the nearest green lollipop, tossing it toward her friend.

“Fifteen hundred, tomorrow afternoon.”

She just smiles as the other woman pops the candy into her mouth. “Want some company?”

 

****

 

She realizes, halfway through the memorial service, that she has Hannah Addison to thank for the way his hand sets into her lap, palm upturned and patiently waiting for hers. She suddenly understands, as she takes his hand in hers, that timing really is everything.

Because it's as she counts backwards by days and studies his profile that she realizes the first night he kissed her, up against her office door and desperate… It had been the same day he'd found their Petty Officer tied and taped up in a dirty basement.

Right, so, it's official… she's a lovesick moron.

There had been a catalyst, of course. And _Dr. Jacqueline Sloane_ shoulda seen that one coming from five miles out.

What she can see instead is Jimmy on the other side of him as she leans closer, the younger man's eyes widened by the way their hands are tucked together in her lap. His lips are parted as though he wants to speak but he's smart enough to stay quiet while the service continues.

She should probably take his quiet as silent advice but the sudden realization of timing has her leaning her lips right ahead of Gibbs ear. “You were always seeing me, weren't you?”

He flinches in answer to her whisper and swallows hard enough that she can hear the force of his throat. “I've been seeing you since you blew through the door, Jack.”

“I don't want to stop. I mean…” She edges her chin nearer his shoulder and she's both surprised and encouraged by the way he turns his jaw just enough to meet her movement. They're pressed warmly together and, damn, if Jimmy Palmer had already been choking on surprise then they're likely about to need an ambulance for the poor kid. “Whatever this is? I just - ”

“I hadn't planned to,” he interrupts with a whisper that has her looking up. He makes a face that verges on bemused but, really, he looks like he just wants her to shut up and stop drawing attention to them. _Oh_ , he's going to have that look a lot, she figures. And she's going to enjoy every second. “Now, hush.”

She smirks, breathes out a laugh as she kisses his jaw chastely, “I do what I want.”

“Of course you do.”


End file.
